I used to be a Holden Commodore man.
I owned four through the 90's and 2000's. Three of them were V8's.
Then one day my mate showed me some adds on the Carsales site for Audi A4's. They were remarkably inexpensive on the used market and one caught my eye. It was an Achate Grey B5 2.6 Quattro manual with 17" BBS's, and I loved it!
I started dating my missus shortly after that, but she didn't like small cars (or fast driving :Confused::-().
I kept it for a few more years anyway (because I liked it!), but missed the V8 power (those 12V V6's are great engines, but powerhouses they are not!).
One day I put a simple search into the Carsales site: "Audi V8".

That was 8 years ago!

oh christ... a proper trip down memory lane....

it all started in 1994 at the tender age of 21 with my first Audi... an ur quattro.... that stayed for over 17 years as a toy and many numerous performance Audi's as the daily drive, S2's (lots of), RS2, RS4, RS6 etc... all cars disposed of and they went around 2012 as had no need for any car due to work location... but kept the motorbikes.... then in 2014 i had need of a car, so bought a cheap run around... so i bought a D2 S8...., that went in exchange for a v6 tdi A5, then my V8 S5 and now my current D3 A8...

i have an R8 itch to scratch at some point but i do like my gentleman's lounge... the A8's in all their versions have a soft spot

I can only blame Skip Sudduth for my S8 ownership (ok, that was a PF in green and I ended up with a FL in silver....)

Having realised I needed to own an S8, I drove several local examples for sale incl an incredibly slow 2.8
I set my Ebay search one week to 'D2 Audi S8' - back in the days when Ebay wasn't full of scam listings.
Stumbled upon a 'pushed in to the corner of a workshop because I don't have time to fix it' car not far from a friend of mine in Somerset...3 days later it was mine.

This article pretty much sums it up for me.....

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/...-revealed.html

I'd had a few Audi's, I remember sitting in my first D2 in the dealer showroom while in for a service and looking for somewhere quiet to take a call, it was very quiet. A few years later I bought practicality the same car, for a fraction of the price, lovely D2 S8.

I sold it to fund house improvements, and moved to a C5 allroad, which was a huge mistake! So a year later I moved to a D3 4.2TDI..... I put a lot of mileage on that car, then swapped for D4, which had more toys but I never really connected with.

Second child, Q7 called.... prams are huge it seems! Maybe I'll go D5 at some point in the future, but the Q7 for now fits the bill in a much more versatile manner!

Mine was down to Connor, I was coming out of the Company Car scheme and looking at the usual boring family stuff. Connor started searching for an S8 and finally found one near Cambridge. I could tell from speaking to the owner he cared for it a lot, was selling as family had flown the nest and a Porsche was his next buy. He almost cried when I asked him to take it to a local Audi Indie for a pre purchase inspection, because he had spent so long cleaning it, anyway it passed with flying colours. He had bought it at 8 months old, £30k less than it was new when bought by Jimmy Nail, bless him for choosing the satin black option for the chrome trim :). Anyway paid a deposit and it was about 4 weeks before we could find a date that we could both make. We flew down, previous owner picked us up at the airport and we drove it home. It was the middle of the 2010 very cold winter and I remember the temperature showing -11 as crossed Shap Summit, still the best car I have ever driven. +++

Mine was because of a film, but not the usual one, mine was the original Transporter film.

Fancying myself as a Jason Statham in his sharp suit and spare laundered shirts in the boot (yes yes, I know! :ROFL: ), I sold my previous car, a 2003 3.0i Z4 and started looking for a nice 7-series.

While looking for a 7-series, I saw a few A8s for sale and decided to test drive one of these too. I first tested a 3.7QS somewhere in South Wales, but found it a bit underpowered (sorry Neil & others) :o

Then a 2000 FL 4.2QS came up at 2nd hand trader in Oxford, 6 years old, 70,xxx miles on the clock, full history including a gearbox refurb, screen price was something like £8,695, and it was in my favourite colour of silver with black interior.

So I bought this one, agreed a price of £8,250 from memory.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1620719737

And so my A8 journey began - my time owning this car coincided with it being a period of my life when money was tightest, so this was was kept for around 5 years (the longest I've ever owned a car), partly because I could not afford to change it.

It was not without problems, most notably a failed steering rack which Audi quoted around £2k to repair, which at the time was about what the car was worth, so me, my dad and my brother took it out, swapped for a refurb unit and reinstalled, over about 4 weekends up on ramps on my driveway.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1620719775

I had started to think about selling in 2011, partly because of the start-up 'death rattle' (to this day I still don't know what caused that?), but then a week or so before I was due to drive it to the South of France, I had it serviced, including a gearbox service at a local 'specialist'

Test fit of roof rack before the aborted holiday trip:

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1620718549

And a couple of days after that, the gearbox failed terminally. Car was sold to a Polish scrapper, last seen being loading on to a truck and heading east in 2011. Had to reverse the car up the truck ramps, as it simply would not drive up forwards with the gearbox fault.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1620719775

You made me go and check that out! My mind's eye had thought it was a 5 series (and I recall wondering at the time why wasn't it a M5!). Glad I was wrong, it all makes a but more sense now!

Ronin for defo

On again atm :D , on ITV4 (started at 9pm...)

My wife destroyed another car unexpectedly, so I had to give her my lovely SAAB.
Being an ex car salesman, I rang a chum of mine in the trade- Lindsay 'Gus' Kerr, to see if he could trade me something.

I explained it was at short notice, and I was broke, but wanted something interesting and expensive to run.
"What about an Audi A8 he said? Wonderful cars".

I bought a 1997 Green A8 and loved it.

Figured an S8 must be better and got my 2000 FL S8 a year or so later.

Had it for about 14 years now, and still love it!